Hi Steve,

I would like to demonstrate how my web service can be called from an
excel spreadsheet. I am just learning to program web services in
asp.net, so I only know enough to be dangerous.

To return a grid of information, could my web service return an HTML
table, or would it have to return an XML stream?

What is the earliest version of excel that can directly call a web
service? I have excel 2000 on my w2k PC. I also have office 2003 from
an MSDN universal subscription that expired in June 2004.

My issue with the version of excel needed is not so much which excel
version I have. It is, which version will my users have and what web
service capabilities will their versions of excel have.

In Excel, web service connectivity is provided by the Web Services
Toolkit, available to download from the Microsoft web site. Although the
addin is branded as being for Excel 2003, it actually works fine in all
versions since Excel 2000. Excel doesn't have any connectivity built in,
so the toolkit creates a proxy class module that wraps the SOAP calls
required - making the web service appear just like a VBA class.

You could return either HTML or XML. If you return HTML, you can paste it
to a worksheet. If you return XML, you'll have to parse it yourself (or
feed it into Excel 2003 XML Import feature). In my opinion, the latter
gives you more control, but it ultimately depends on what you want to do.

Lastly, if you want to see a working example, I provide an example and
explanation in chapter 23 of Professional Excel Development.

Regards

Stephen Bullen
Microsoft MVP - Excel
Author of Professional Excel Development,
the most advanced Excel VBA book available.
www.oaltd.co.uk